The Night OutThe Night In
by A Damned Scientist
Summary: Over four decades have passed since PKW, sharply exposing certain differences between sebaceans and humans. Warning - this is not a happy fic.
1. The Night Out

The Night Out (R)

Setting and Warning: About 4 decades post PKW. There is some graphic sex. However, this is not a happy fic. No character death, but extreme angst. A good old fashioned Character Death might have been somewhat more cheerful. Definitely no fluffy bunnies. I didn't want to write this fic – this isn't the sort of thing I enjoy reading. But insistent voices were raised, so here it is.

Thanks: Vinegardog for beta-ing

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Word count: 1400

The Night Out (R)

"Yes! Yes! YES! Now John!" Aeryn keened, as she arched her back and balled her fist into the short-cropped hair of the man who she had just spent the last half arn frantically frelling. Her climax was long and slow, in marked contrast to his: one short, shuddering explosion and he was done. He ground himself into her, trying to wring out an extra few mircots of pleasure before he was finally spent.

The recent, forceful rocking of his hips dwindled to nothing, although he did not pull away from her quite yet. Aeryn felt his hand come up and stroke her hair, still long, dark and lustrous after four decades of marriage and as many children. His ragged breath tickled across the sensitive skin below her ear like a gentle, planetside breeze. Aeryn squeezed her eyes closed, just tightly enough to let her imagination prevail.

"That's nice, John," she sighed, smiling. Part of her, although she wouldn't have liked to have thought about which part, was sufficiently tuned into the wider Universe to notice that he had stopped caressing her. "Please. Don't stop." Aeryn whispered, hoping that he would continue.

Slowly, steadily, her mind began to emerge from the sleep of reason. As sense began to return to her, she tried to hold the truth back for just a little longer by running her hands across the full, taut muscles of his upper arms and shoulders. There was nothing quite like the feel of smooth, young skin stretched tight across a well-toned physique. She breathed in deeply, savouring the aroma of an aroused man – a man aroused by her. Finally, with more than a little reluctance, she opened her eyes and met his.

Despite having just had his fill of her, despite him still filling her in the most intimate of ways, he was scowling at her, his anger and resentment so badly hidden. She knew why. She didn't need him to explain.

He was upset, hurt that she had called out John's name as she had climaxed, then whispered it again afterwards. Well, frell him! What did she care? He'd had a good time, of that she was sure, and it would do him good to learn that in this life you didn't always get everything you wanted. Or deserved.

Aeryn always picked someone new for her recreation sessions. Always someone she didn't know, would never know. Someone she didn't care about and never would. It was just sex. Fluid level reduction. Attending to the physical needs of Moya's Captain, to help keep her functioning at optimum efficiency. It was never anything else. She didn't want it to be, wouldn't let it be. Couldn't let it be.

The young Peacekeeper Captain's face was angry with resentment as he disengaged himself from her and disappeared towards the sanitary alcove. Tomorrow they would be rendezvousing with his next ship and he would be leaving Moya. That suited Aeryn just fine.

'~'

The unused cell was just as she had left it when she had prepared it earlier that day, a change of clothes laid out and waiting. This wasn't the first time she had done this. Everything she needed was there. Well, almost everything. Aeryn entered the cell, stripped, and began to shower.

She stood beneath the cool water, so like rain, rinsing all physical trace of her latest partner off of her skin. She knew that she could clean off the physical signs, but there were some things that no amount of water would wash away.

Many things could render a man sexually impotent. Accident. Illness. Or, in the case of a human, simply the passage of a mere 47 cycles since they had first met. John was now elderly and frail whilst Aeryn was still in the prime of her life. It was last, cruellest and most relentless of all the tricks that time, fate and the universe had played on them.

There was no question in Aeryn's mind that she still loved John Crichton with a painful, burning need. The only problem was that there was more than one type of pain, and she had other burning needs which had been met with less and less frequency as the cycles and decades had rolled by. So, six cycles ago on a solo two-night resupply run, driven by frustration and raslak, she had sought out her first quick, meaningless frell in many, many cycles.

Afterwards, and every time since, she had hated herself for what she had done. She felt gripped by self-loathing, by the feeling that she had betrayed John. The sexual relief was always short lived and it left her feeling empty and dirty. She had hoped that the improvement in her efficiency and the respite of 'scratching the itch', as John might have termed it, would be more beneficial than it was. She had hoped that it might weigh more heavily in the balance against the reduction in her efficiency caused by her hatred of what she had done and the worry about how much it might hurt John should he ever find out.

The first time that she had done it on Moya was two cycles later. Pilot had been angry with her for weekens afterwards. Eventually, though, he had come to accept it. Aeryn thought that was probably because he had come to realise that his own anger was as nothing compared to her own self-loathing. That and the dread which she had confided to Pilot at the thought of what it might do to John, poor, fragile John, should he find out. Not that she wasn't suspicious that John hadn't somehow learnt about her nights out. Something about his manner had subtly changed. It had happened about six monens ago, right after she had returned from one of her assignations. He was even more infuriatingly….. nice than usual. Apologetic, almost. It seemed to her as though he understood what she was doing and why and felt guilty because he was no longer able to be everything she needed him to be. She had no idea what he might have found out or how. She really didn't want to ask, afraid of what she might discover.

Aeryn turned off the water and began to dry herself.

A couple of hundred microts later she was dressed again in the fresh clothes which she had laid out earlier that day and was slipping back through the darkened, familiar corridors of Moya towards the cell she shared with her husband.

'~'

"Hey, babe," John greeted her from under the sheets. He flicked on his bedside light. It provided just enough illumination for them to see each other, but not enough to read anything, at least not properly, so you could tell what they might be thinking.

"Hey," Aeryn replied, struggling not to let the word stick in her throat.

"Hey," he responded, watching her strip by the faint night light. She turned slightly so that he could not see her face, even in the dim light of their bedchamber. She was still a master at hiding her emotions, but John was still a master at reading them. Without answering, she slipped under the cold sheets. She knew she had broken the rules of their game by not responding, but she didn't trust herself to answer.

The silence drifted on for a few microts as she fidgeted to get comfortable. When it was clear she would not answer, John turned out the light and spoke again.

"You get done what you needed to get done?" he whispered. She was grateful that he had turned the light out. The merciful darkness meant that she didn't have to look into his impossibly blue eyes. That didn't stop her picturing how painfully full of understanding and forgiveness they might be.

"Yes," her voice was flat, on the verge of breaking. Even she could hear it.

"Good." There was a long silence, punctuated only by his bony fingers stealing across and finding her hand, gripping it tightly. "Love you," he said at last, his voice quiet and quavering. Was it his age that caused his voice to falter, or something else?

"Love you too," she breathed, fighting back the urge to cry, to scream. To confess…

Only you. Only ever you, John Crichton, Aeryn thought to herself as she gripped John's fragile hand as tightly as she dared.

End


	2. The Night In

The Night In (PG-15)

Companion piece to The Night Out. Setting, about 4-5 decades post PKW.

Warnings: Adult themes and bad language and angst.

Disclaimer: FS doesn't belong to me, I'm just borrowing it. Similarly with the lyrics borrowed from Robert Cray and Dr Hook. No money is being made either way and no disrespect is intended.

Thanks: To Vinegardog for beta-ing. To Iscascaper for asking for John's POV.

Wordcount: 1532

The Night In (PG-15)

"It's Wednesday night, my woman's out, once again I'm home alone.…." John found himself humming. He had no idea if it was Wednesday or not, but had long since worked out that a night in alone sure could lead to some unhealthy introspection. Knowing it didn't stop it from happening, though.

Some days, the good days, John felt like he was a young man trapped in an old man's body. Those days were the easiest, because then he could imagine that, with the right medicine, everything might be alright. On the bad days his thoughts betrayed every year of the venerable old age that he had achieved. On those days he could be difficult, if not downright curmudgeonly. And, of course, he would contemplate that sex was nothing more than a distant memory, something to replay fondly, or not, in his mind's eye as he drifted off into one of his many naps, rather than something he might actually participate in.

There was one thought that he could not escape: it was not that he had simply lost interest in his partner. Rather his mind and body had lost the interest in and ability to recreate under any circumstances. Aeryn was a good-looking woman, appearing to be not a day over 35, in human terms. John could well appreciate that she was still attractive by any measure. From his distant memories John could just about recall that it would be darned unusual for a human woman of that age to have a sculpted six-pack. If anyone could have aroused him, it would have been her. And Aeryn was still keen on sex, of that he was sure. But for his part, the flesh was weak and the mind was largely uninterested.

He still adored Aeryn, still enjoyed her company, still ached when they were apart. But sex had largely become a chore. Actually, he thought, in recent cyclesit had become something he almost dreaded. The thought of her, young and vigorous, with him, old and decrepit, turned his stomach slightly. Combined with this, Aeryn had always liked her recreation to be very athletic energetic. Even if he had had the energy to keep up with her, old bones were brittle. These days, no matter what medication John took, something big was most definitely missing from their relationship.

'~'

"When you're in love with a beautiful woman, you know it's hard…" a voice sang in his mind. John bit back a bitter laugh. If only….

John had found out about Aeryn's extra-curricular activities about six monens previously. He'd had his suspicions before that, of course, but had convinced himself it was just his natural jealousy talking. But the confrontation in the bar had been impossible to ignore.

One of Aeryn's escapades, a young Sebacean with a sneer on his lips and a glint of cruelty in his eye, had recognized John in a space station hostelry and had made a point of coming up to him and rubbing his face in it. At length and in excruciating detail.

Bastard.

It had seemed that it wasn't enough just for the young cock to have frelled another man's wife, that particular gentleman seemed to revel in the opportunity to crow about it. John was no spring chicken:he was well aware that there were all sorts of guys in the Universe, and not all of them were nice. If he'd been a few decades younger, he'd have punched the little shit, but at his age, John knew full well that such a course of action would not have ended well for him. So he sucked it up and, face red with anger and embarrassment, made his excuses and left.

After that confrontation John had pondered long and hard about what he should do about the man's claims and his own suspicions. Like a good rocket scientist, he had weighed up and analysed all the evidence, options and possibilities in his head. Then he had gone back over things, trying to get to the root of why they were where they exercise had not left him in a happy place.

By human standards Aeryn was still young. She had needs, needs which he was only too aware that he could not hope to fulfil. John knew that in the culturein which she had been raised, sex was regarded as just a biological function, like eating or sleeping, and long-term relationships were frowned upon. She had travelled a long way from her life as a Peacekeeper, of course, but he knew that ideas imprinted in childhood were the hardest to leave behind.

As time passed, John began to feel that it was his fault that he had grown so old and had placed her in such a difficult position. The more John thought about it, the more guilt he felt that he could no longer give her what she needed.

One thing he could seek comfort in though: she had chosen to remain with him, rather than leave for a younger, more vital partner.

Thus he had come to understand her infidelity, almost welcome it. She had done what she needed to, but she had not left him. Not yet, anyhow. She had not rubbed his face in it, either – it had taken an arrogant stranger to do that. When all was said and done, there was enough evidence to hope that she still loved him. She had loved him once, of that he was sure.

And he loved her. She was his One Thing. John knew his time in this life was growing short. He could risk throwing away spending his last few days with the love of his life, or he could take what he had, which was all he could cope with anyway, and be grateful.

But he had to know.

'~'

What do you say to your wife of four and a half decades, the mother of your children, when she comes back home after seeing another man?

What do you say if you still love her? Love her more than anything else, and are desperate not to drive her away or let her drift away?

"Hey, babe," John greeted Aeryn from under the sheets, giving her the chance to speak whatever was on her mind. No pressure. He flicked on his bedside light. It provided just enough illumination for him to see her by.

"Hey," Aeryn replied. It was clear she was not going to add anything to that.

"Hey," he responded, watching as she undressed by the faint night light. His frustration and unease grew as she turned slightly so that he could not see her face, even in the dim light of their bedchamber. She was still a master at hiding her emotions, but he was still a master at reading them, if only she would allow him the chance. She was not making it easy, not that he could blame her. Or maybe she was trying to make things easier, by trying to keep things from him? Without answering, she slipped under the sheets alongside him. Her expression was still obscured and she had broken the rules of their game by not responding. John was unsure as to what to do now.

The silence drifted on for a few microts as Aeryn fidgeted to get comfortable. When it was clear she would not answer, John turned out the light and spoke again, desperate to connect, to reassure both of them that everything was OK.

"You get done what you needed to get done?" he whispered. He peered at her, trying to gauge her reaction, but it was no use. It was too dark and his eyes were too old.

"Yes," she replied at last. There was no more clue as to how she was feeling in her words, or, he corrected himself, word. Nor was there any clue in her tone of voice. John felt at his wits' end.

"Good." He said, not knowing what else to say. At least he could be grateful, if for nothing else, that she had once again returned to him. There was a long silence. He couldn't leave things this way between them. He wouldn't be able to sleep tonight if he left things like this. The not knowing how she might feel about their future was too painful. He tentatively edged his hand across the bed until he found hers. Once he had found it, he gripped it tightly. She did not pull away, which was something, at least. But still she did not speak. John could stand it no more.

"Love you," he said at last, venturing his best card. His voice was quiet and quavering, gripped with fear as to how she might respond.

"Love you too," he heard her whisper, her tone at last betraying her hurt, her words confessing her love. He knew that she meant those words with all of her heart and as such it was enough for him. It was more than enough. It was everything.

With a lump in his throat and hope in his heart, John held on to her hand for all he was worth.

The end


End file.
